Jumping on the Bandwagon: 27 Days
by Smoochynose
Summary: Danzo convinces the council to banish Naruto. Insanity ensues. "P.S. Naruto sends his love." Friendship fic


A/N: This is my sort of sequel to Jumping on the Bandwagon. Same essential beginnings. Danzo gets Naruto banished. Reactions are a lot different. Much less serious. Enjoy!

* * *

**-=- Jumping on the Bandwagon: 27 Days -=-**

* * *

**Day 1 of Naruto's Banishment**

Sakura was in an outrage. Wherever she went a path of destruction was left behind, her superhuman strength snapping tree trunks like toothpicks and bulldozing walls and buildings like Lego blocks.

Kakashi's little, orange book (his hardback edition) had nail marks digging their way through the cover and several of the outer pages from where he gripped it so hard in anger.

Tsunade office had several holes in the walls where she had called several people in that she had her quarrels with and proceeded to through them through the chakra enforced structure of the Hokage tower and out into open air several stories high.

Danzo had spoken. The council had voted. Naruto was banished.

Konoha felt their wrath.

* * *

**Day 2 of Naruto's Banishment**

It was Sakura who started it. She walked down to one of the shops that supplied shinobi wares and demanded to buy a tent. Not only that but the tent had to orange. The shop keeper had been so intimidated that she got a special discount on the condition that she never returned to the shop again.

From there she walked down to the biggest park in Konoha and pitched the tent. It hadn't taken word long to spread to her friends once she hung a banner across both sides of her tent proclaiming 'SUPPORT NARUTO. DOWN WITH THE COUNCIL.'

Pretty soon all of rookie 12 and their instructors had their own tents and their own slogans and set up pitch in the park.

Their strike had begun.

* * *

**Day 3 of Naruto's Banishment**

Konoha shinobi were notorious for supporting each other. Soon friends and friends of friends and people just plain outraged at how easy it was for the council to banish one of their own without consulting anybody, even the Hokage, had set up camp in the field.

When a large proportion of the shinobi forces did not turn up for their mission appointments Danzo himself went down to the park to find out what was going on, having heard rumours of the slowly growing tent city.

He found the current ringleader of the movement standing in front of a crowd of angry civilians and shinobi, giving them a speech of the unfairness, corruptness of the council, brandishing a picket board in the air like a weapon, and surprisingly intimidating for a teenage girl clashing pink and orange.

"What in the Shinobi Nations is going on here?"

"This is a sit in!"

The crowd roared in approval.

* * *

**Day 4 of Naruto's Banishment**

_Dear Tsunade-sama,_

_I thought that it would be best to inform you that a certain blonde shinobi has arrived in Sand claiming to have been banished. Uzumaki Naruto shall be staying at the Kazekage tower with my siblings and I for the time being._

_While he appears his usual self I have no doubt that Naruto is hurting because of this act of betrayal on behalf of his village. You should inform your council that for the time being the Sand-Leaf peace treaty is on shaky grounds._

_Sabaku no Gaara _

_Kazekage_

_P.S. Naruto sends his love._

* * *

**Day 5 of Naruto's Banishment**

Danzo was wary that morning as he walked into town, seeing Copy Cat Kakashi carrying several loads of wooden planks from one side of the street, through an ally, towards the growing field of tents that had been set up to support Naruto.

He had a feeling that nothing good would come of this.

* * *

**Day 6 of Naruto's Banishment**

There was fence around the park that hadn't been there the day before with only a small entrance way on the east side. While the fence was not particularly a problem for most in a ninja village, those who entered the way the inhabitants wished had to go past another new addition to the field.

There was a wooden stand on the edge of the park by the entrance, slightly away from where the tent city began. A sign had been painted in orange above it proclaiming 'SUPPORT OUR SHINOBI. BRING BACK UZUMAKI NARUTO.'

Beneath the sign, behind the stand, and sprawled on a chair Kakashi sat talking to those entering, accepting donations to the cause, and stamping hands with a stamp that his remaining student had supplied him with.

He grinned maliciously to himself as he handed the first badge out to a man leaving the park with a tent rolled up. Danzo would learn not to mess with his comrades.

* * *

**Day 7 of Naruto's Banishment**

For a shinobi, it took a while for Danzo to notice the badges that half the citizens of Konoha were wearing pinned to their chests. He would had noticed them sooner but he was too busy gazing angrily at the posters that were pinned in the windows of several of his favourite stores, including a high end restaurant he often used.

The posters were tacky, they were florescent, and they were orange. To make it worse they all had slogans like 'BRING BACK NARUTO' and 'SERVING SUPPORTERS OF UZUMAKI ONLY'.

When he tried to buy his daily newspaper, he was suddenly spending ten times as much as before. To add to his outrage several shops actually threw him out. When Danzo finally demanded why he was being charged so much for everything he bought the oh so helpful cashier pointed out he didn't have a badge.

It was then Danzo noticed how many people were wearing the small circular, orange badges. Apparently you got them by spending twenty-four hours in the tent city in support of Naruto. Once you had a badge it enabled you to enter all the shops in the city and buy items at a discount in the supporting shops.

Those without were victims of daylight robbery.

Better that though, Danzo had decided, than letting Uzumaki stay in the village.

* * *

**Day 8 of Naruto's Banishment**

Temari twitched.

To start with she thought it had been a great idea to let Naruto stay with them after he was banished from Konoha. Every time they met he had a positive effect on her youngest brother. She considered him one of her friends, it was only natural that she let him stay.

Now she was beginning to wonder if the Konoha council just decided to use the fact he was dangerous as an excuse to rid themselves of the boy. He'd been there five days. He was annoyingly cheerful for someone who'd just been banished from his home, sang chirpy songs that were annoying anyway too quickly to keep up with, and now, just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, she'd opened the cupboards in the kitchen to get a bag of her favourite chestnuts only to discovered they'd been replaced. By ramen.

The stuff was everywhere. In every cupboard, every little place where it could be stored it was, even in the fridge despite being non-perishable. The kid must have bought out the entire supply of instant ramen in the village. And when she asked where her chestnuts were.

"Oh, those little brown things. I thought they were just rubbish so I threw them away."

It took her five weeks to manage to track down a packet of chestnuts in the middle of a desert.

She couldn't shout though. He was just trying to be helpful. He had just lost his home. He had helped her brother.

She mustn't shout.

It was getting harder and harder not to twitch at every sound the blond made though.

* * *

**Day 9 of Naruto's Banishment**

_Dear Jiraiya,_

_(and no that was not a term of affection but how you open letters), due to the council's idiocy of banishing Naruto, which you have no doubt heard of by now, we have started a support group with the aims of bring him back to Konoha._

_Unfortunately we have hit our first hurdle in our campaign. I have an A rank mission for you that you shall be sharing with several of Naruto's previous acquaintances, including myself. Please return to Konoha as soon as possible._

_Tsunade_

* * *

**Day 10 of Naruto's Banishment**

Kiba had a smug grin on his face as his friends questioned him. He wasn't going to give in though. They knew that he knew what Shino wasn't telling them and he was having great fun watching them try and wheedle it out of.

They knew they'd never get it out of the stoic bug user so they were trying to convince him. Of course they wanted to know. Shino had been seen snickering to himself after Kiba commented that he knew what he did last night. It was just too tempting for the others not to know.

Sakura ruined his fun ten minutes later when she came in announcing that someone had egged Danzo's house.

Day 11 of Naruto's Banishment

There were people queuing outside of his house when Danzo got up that morning. When he tried to get out of his house he was met with the crowd of people hissing at him for cutting in and shoved him to the back of the queue.

He then proceeded to question what was happening to the men and woman nearby, only to have them ignore him. Eventually he came to the decision to stay in the queue until he discovered what was going on.

Several exhausting hours later, in which Danzo had realised that the people in the queue were from all over the Elemental Countries (even some samurai from Iron Country) and not just Konoha and Fire Country, he finally rounded the corner to see what was happening.

Fury and indignation washed over him. The two loyal sannin, the Kazekage, a young woman he vaguely recalled as a famous actress, and several other famous people were sat by some tables giving out autographs (Jiraiya's were on suspiciously orange books).

In the background were the banners that were becoming increasingly familiar with every passing day.

Naruto's supporters had just succeeded in their first publicity and fundraising event.

* * *

**Day 12 of Naruto's Banishment**

"We need a name," Sakura said as she leant back against the wooden stand that was at the entrance to what had become dubbed as 'Naruto City'. She was slightly jealous that her team-mate kept having things named after him. First a bridge and now a city.

"We have names already, forehead," Ino said, her tone indicating how she thought Sakura's intelligence had been falling quite rapidly.

"For our cause."

"Oh. Um, let's see. What about … I can't think of anything. Clever acronyms are hard."

"What about ORANGE."

"What's it stand for?"

"Operation: Retrieve the Abandoned Naruto and Get Even."

Ino sighed. "That doesn't really work. Naruto hasn't been abandoned. That's why we're doing all this."

Sakura shrugged. "I couldn't think of anything else for A."

"ADD."

"That's an acronym itself."

"Well I can't think of anything either." She paused, before smiling and bellowing across the field, "Shikamaru. Get your ass over here. We have a job for you."

Though they couldn't hear it, both girls just knew that halfway across the park the Nara teen was muttering 'troublesome' under his breath.

* * *

**Day 13 of Naruto's Banishment**

Once a month there was a standard jounin meeting in which the Hokage, council members, and the jounin discussed many important issues, including things like village security, possible changes in current jounin teams, and who was to possibly become one of the next genin instructors.

The meetings were important and, if you were away on a mission and missed it, you would go to a catch-up meeting where all the issues addressed would be run through and any votes needing to be cast were cast. The meeting was mandatory, which was why Danzo was wondering where everyone was, aside from the other council members, when he walked in five minutes early.

The silence was deafening and the council members in the room sat tapping pen/feet/fingers whilst glancing at the door. There were enough of them there to certain they were at the correct time and there were always the few jounin who arrived early to the meeting.

At 2:30 on the dot, the door slid open and Hatake Kakashi entered, ignoring the gob smacked stares, and sat down in his seat. Looking up he noticed the looks he was receiving and calmly looked down, patting his arms and chest before finally looking back up.

"Do I have something on my face?"

"No," said one of the middle-aged councillors from the civilian sector. "We were just wondering why you're on time." He trailed off, leaving it as a question.

"I'm being sponsored."

The councillor's brow furrowed. "Sponsored?"

Kakashi's eyes closed into an upside-down U shape as he smiled. "I'm being sponsored for every meeting I turn up to on time. Hokage-sama made a very generous donation. Would you like to sign up too?" he asked, pulling out a sheet of paper.

"What exactly are they sponsoring you for?" asked an old lady whose eyes were almost covered by her wrinkles.

"Turning up on time."

"Your cause. I mean what is your cause?"

"Oh, RAMEN."

"You're turning up on time, after all these years, for noodles?"

"Not ramen. RAMEN. Rally Against the Maltreatment and Exile of Naruto," explained Kakashi.

The few councillors who had been on the verge of signing the sheet, glad that the man was finally turning up to meetings on time, stopped.

"And where," asked Danzo speaking up, "is everybody?"

"At the park."

"The park?" repeated a councillor in a disbelieving voice, having only been back in the village half an hour before the meeting he had not heard yet of the events of the previous weeks. Currently all he knew was the jounin were missing a meeting to go to the park.

"We're having a sit in. I'm here because they sponsored me. The Akimichi Clan was kind enough to host a barbeque for us."

"And Tsunade is allowing this?"

"Oh, she's on the roof."

"And why is she on the roof?"

"Well somebody has to watch the casino."

* * *

**Day 14 of Naruto's Banishment**

The roof of the Hokage Tower had been transformed. On every surface there were one-armed-bandits, poker tables, roulette, and any other gabling game that one could think of.

Between the spaces in-between the games, Konoha shinobi and kunoichi weaved having the time of their lives. At the very top and centre sat the Godaime Hokage, looking smugly at them, as she watched their money go down the drain in the (partially rigged) games. Nobody seemed to had noticed yet that none of the councillors had so much as won a single coin.

The casino had already made a fortune for the RAMEN cause.

There had been the small problem when Danzo had visited the rooftop casino the day before. Apparently as Hokage she was under contract to not be able to take up a second job during her period as Hokage.

Fortunately an emergency meeting with the village jounin and chuunins meant that starting tomorrow a new Hokage would be temporarily serving whilst she took a leave of absence.

Today though, she was just another guest.

"Double or nothing, all of it on red."

* * *

**Day 15 of Naruto's Banishment**

The room was cosy, if one ignored the growing pile of paperwork on the desk. The chair was well worn, creaked a little, but it had to be the comfiest thing the temporary Hokage had ever sat on. The view was great, without a doubt the best in the village, and he still felt warm that he had been chosen the honour of being Hokage.

To his left sat three beautiful woman, giggling as they whispered lowly to each other, fluttering their eyelids at him. Behind him stood another woman, using a fan of leaves to cool him.

Life, he thought, plucking another grape from the bunch on the table, was good. However he could not forgot the reason why he was there. He could not forget about RAMEN.

His distracted mind was helped along by the door bursting open. "Tsunade I demand that …"

Danzo's voice trailed off at the sight in the office. "What is going on here."

The new Hokage tapped his hat - the oh so wonderful Hokage hat - and quipped, "Godaime-sama has taken a leave of absence to run her casino and the jounin and chuunin voted me in as the new Hokage for the foreseeable future for an unspecified period of time."

The Hokage watched as Danzo's face slowly turned red, smirking beneath the rim of his hat.

"Now," he said, looking up at the man, "If you wouldn't mind I've got an appointment at 3:00 and I wouldn't want to keep them waiting.

With one last furious look, Danzo stormed out of the office.

Konohamaru could only laugh.

* * *

**Day 16 of Naruto's banishment**

_Shikamaru,_

_I heard that you're all trying to support Naruto over there. I hope you succeed in getting it lifted soon. Seriously you have to take him back. I know that he saved my brother and all but I can't take it anymore._

_The smiles, the cheerfulness, the happy all the time attitude is really starting to get to me. Nobody is that happy. Nobody. Especially after being banished from your home. He sings, all the time. He's off tune and I have a migraine that just won't stop. He bounces everywhere._

_Then there's the ramen. How much can that guy eat? He's been eating his own weight in ramen every meal, I haven't seen him touch any vegetables, and he doesn't get fat and he's healthy as a horse. It's enough to give a girl a complex. Then there's the instant ramen he bought. The house is full of it. I opened the bathroom cabinet to get my toothbrush this morning and a dozen packets fell on my head._

_If you don't find a way to get him un-banished soon then I'll find a way to convince Gaara into pulling out of the peace treaty with Leaf. It'd be easy. The logic is simple. Gaara likes Naruto. Leaf hurt Naruto. Gaara hurts leaf. See simple. Even Naruto would understand it._

_Temari._

* * *

**Day 17 of Naruto's banishment**

Naruto City had changed in the last few days. With Danzo's stubbornness not to give in becoming more and more apparent, several residents had decided that they may as well have their creature comforts on site, rather than have to get up and return to their houses temporarily.

Outside Ino's tent there was now a garden, from which she was selling fresh flowers on a small table beside it. Somebody had managed to get the site hooked up with electricity and so there were now speakers surrounding the encampment playing music from requests handed in at Kakashi's wooden stand.

The biggest change however must have been in the tent that Hinata and Neji Hyuga were sharing. There was now an actual patio with a picnic table and barbeque. Neji had apparently been told by his uncle that if he and Hinata were going to be 'living as commoners' then they had to have their tent befitting the family standards. In other words it had to be the best by a long shot, which is why Neji had called in some landscapers.

The teenager had a smug look on his face when he had seen Danzo's outrage at the defiling of public property.

* * *

**Day 18 of Naruto's banishment**

_"By Official Decree of the Hokage, this week is now National Prank Danzo Week. Each citizen of Konoha is required to have pulled off at least one prank successfully against Danzo by the end of the week, either by one's self or as a group. Failure to succeed in pranking Danzo automatically results in a small tax donation to the RAMEN cause."_

* * *

**Day 19 of Naruto's banishment**

Danzo was having a bad day. People kept chucking banana skins at his feet, hoping that he would trip up. There were full sized posters of him that had been photo shopped into embarrassing situations. As he left for work a bucket full of honey had been poured on him and halfway to work a pillow was ripped open next to a fan, causing the feathers to blow over to him and stick to the honey.

Once he got to work there had been several immature phone calls, ranging from reparative hanging up, false names, to somebody making farm animal noises on the other side. When he had opened his first report folder of the day, Danzo had been faced with multiple photocopies of somebody's rear end.

His morning coffee resulted in being a mix of instant coffee powder, sugar, milk, and gravy granules and by the time he left in the evening there was a sheet of paper saying 'Anko's bitch' stuck to his back.

Then, just when they day couldn't get any worse, somebody had painted his house orange.

* * *

**Day 20 of Naruto's banishment**

Sakura sat in the Hokage's office in front of the newest Hokage, calmly sipping her tea with a serene smile on her face. "You're genius, Konohamaru. Pure genius. I swear Danzo's eye was twitching the whole day yesterday."

The Hokage grinned. "Not only that but there are still five more beautiful days to go."

"I've never seen Hinata look so evil. It makes me wonder what she's got planned."

Konohamaru shook his head regretfully. "She used to be such a sweet girl." His regret turned in a grin, unable to hold the act any longer. "She's used her clan connections to remove every single toilet Danzo has access to."

Pink eyebrows rose. "I never knew she had it in her."

* * *

**Day 21 of Naruto's banishment**

_Shikamaru,_

_Naruto's finally snapped. I've never known a more annoying depressive. He mopes and mopes and mopes. And then, when he isn't moping, he's in a bath full to the brim with instant ramen, singing along to the most depressive songs I have ever had the misfortune to hear._

_I knew I shouldn't have shouted at him. I didn't even feel good at the time, let alone now. It was like kicking a puppy. An overgrown, blond, orange wearing, ninja puppy but a puppy none the less._

_If Konoha doesn't take him back soon then I don't know what I'll do. Gaara's looking twitchy - the 'I'm going to crush you with my sand and feed your blood to mother' twitchy - for the first time in years._

_Temari_

_P.S. I can't believe I thought the old Naruto was bad._

* * *

**Day 22 of Naruto's banishment**

After twenty two days of showing their support for Naruto, a few of those who hadn't actually met them were beginning to stop taking actions which inconvenienced their daily life.

That and they were beginning to get hungry. Money raised for the cause was beginning to be stretched thin. Because of that the main organisers (which consisted mostly of rookie 12) were sat in the orange tent that acted as headquarters for RAMEN discussing fundraising ideas.

They'd been at it for hours but nobody could agree on anything.

"I've got it!" Lee said, leaping to his feet. "It is the most youthful idea that has ever been youthful!"

* * *

**Day 23 of Naruto's banishment**

"_This is the captains log. It's been twenty-three days since we lost our commanding officer. Times are rough, supplies are dwindling quickly, and Lee has discovered the youthfulness of candyfloss_."

"Get back to work Kiba! Help me set up this stand we haven't got all day."

Kiba grumbled but listened to Ino anyway. Mad Ino was no where near as scary as mad Sakura but he'd still rather avoid the situation if her could help it.

* * *

**Day 24 of Naruto's banishment**

When Danzo decided to check up on how RAMEN was doing (in other words seeing what weaknesses they had developed so he crush the movement) he saw that the park had more the park had been transformed.

The tents had finally been taken down and Naruto City was gone. In its place was what looked like one of the many travelling caravans that arrived in town, set up their stands, and caused the town to descend into temporary insanity before they moved on again.

The Naruto Carnival had just begun, spreading out onto the streets instead of just the park.

Seeing the chaos that Konoha was descending into, Danzo decided that it was time for RAMEN to be stopped. First though, he needed a man on the inside.

* * *

**Day 25 of Naruto's banishment**

Sai walked through the streets, intrigued by the excitement around him because of the carnival. He had never been to one before and so had read many books about them. It was because of that he was weary about trying any of the games, since apparently most of them would be rigged. He was also worried about eating any of the food.

However since his … friends were running the stands he was slightly more inclined to trust them, which was odd because he had been taught his whole life as a shinobi he was not to trust anyone.

He didn't understand why people liked carnivals, especially when it was hot and crowded and noisy, but when Sakura (taking a break from her RAMEN duties for once) spotted him and took him around the different stands, laughing at stories she told him, showing him which stands were the best to visit, and having a good time, he could understand a little better why people liked to go to carnivals.

A rare, sincere smile crawled onto his lips.

* * *

**Day 26 of Naruto's banishment**

Water dripped in the underground tunnels beneath Konoha. An Anbu operative knelt before Danzo respectfully.

"Report."

"It has been twenty-six days and the leaders of RAMEN are showing no signs that they intend to give up on their campaign to have the banishment of Uzumaki Naruto lifted. Haruno Sakura seemed particularly happy when I queried about what new fundraisers she had planned for after the carnival ended."

"Good work. You may remove your mask."

The operative did as he was commanded (he knew that it was not a suggestion like it sounded) and watched at the look of barely contained rage that appeared on Danzo's face.

"What is that?"

"Haruno Sakura explained to me that it was a common event to have your face painted at carnivals. All support reading I have since done of the subject has confirmed this fact. Is it in fact incorrect?"

His leader's fist clenched and stalked away without saying a word, knowing that if he took any other action it would result in the loss of one of his best operatives who had managed to infiltrate Hatake Kakashi's team.

Sai, still kneeling, looked at his reflection in a puddle from the leaks in confusion. He did not see anything wrong with the face paint. In fact Danzo was the only one who had had a negative reaction to it.

In the puddle, his face painted like a Dalmatian's (a black path over his eye and tongue lolling down his chin) gazed back with equal confusion.

* * *

**Day 27 of Naruto's banishment**

"What is this?" demanded Danzo, placing the paper down on the table of the stand Kakashi had set up, currently being manned by Sakura.

"That," she said, "Now that looks like a flyer to me."

Danzo resisted the urge to growl by a thread. "I know it's a flyer. I want to know what it's about?"

"I would I have thought it was pretty obvious. 'Tours of Konoha Village Security'," she read out, before musing, "Maybe we didn't make it clear enough."

"I know what it means. What I want to know is why you're giving tours of our security."

"It's our new fundraising scheme," Sakura explained calmly. "And look, you even get a discount this Saturday if you're from Rock."

* * *

**Day 28 of Naruto's banishment**

_Dear Kazekage-sama,_

_On behalf of the Konoha Council we would like to thank you for looking after Uzumaki Naruto for the past month and request that you pass on a message informing him that on review of the matter of his banishment that some facts were unknown at the time and have now been taken into consideration, resulting on his banishment being revoked and he is free to return to Konoha._

_Konoha Council_


End file.
